Case Study: Monobank

monobank is Ukraine's first mobile-only bank and one of the world’s fastest-growing banks. Founded in late 2017, monobank’s user base has grown to 2 million customers in February 2020 and it continues to grow with 130,000 monthly new users.

How monobank stopped fraud with Adjust

When monobank was gearing up to launch Ukraine’s first mobile-only bank, the company knew that it would run performance marketing campaigns to acquire new users. They decided to test out different traffic sources and evaluate the results based on metrics that signified value for monobank. Some examples of these metrics include users signing up for a new account or completing a transaction. Given that each source has hundreds, even thousands of sub-sources, being able to measure the performance of each source was crucial in order for monobank to understand the profitability of each user. When they started looking for an attribution provider, monobank wanted to work with a provider who had experience in the fintech space. The team was sold on Adjust’s simplicity, price and vast experience with other mobile banks.

Being a mobile-first bank, monobank’s primary goal was to find new users that open accounts after they’d install the app. For that reason, they operated on a cost per action (CPA) model with publishers, meaning they were giving higher payouts to publishers that could drive users who completed a post install event. As time went on, their buying methods grew more sophisticated, and they started leveraging Adjust’s real-time raw data callbacks to change their payouts depending on the specific action that was completed. However, after some time, they started to notice a lot of suspicious activity. New users were creating accounts but then user activity would suddenly drop. That’s when it realized that fraud was a major problem.

As the cost-per-action (CPA) payouts are higher than cost-per-install (CPI), monobank’s campaigns were particularly vulnerable to attribution fraud. Initially, they tried to handle the issue internally, but weren't able to react quickly enough. That’s when the team knew it needed Adjust’s support. As soon as monobank identified the issue, it got in touch with the Adjust team to discuss fraud prevention solutions. The team at Adjust gave them the inside track on the current state of fraud as well as a deep-dive into the different types of fraud out there — from spoofed attribution and spoofed users.

Immediately after monobank chatted with Adjust, it implemented the Adjust Fraud Prevention Suite to start blocking all suspicious behavior coming from marketing campaigns.

With the Adjust Fraud Prevention Suite activated on all its campaigns, monobank noticed clear results:

• 20-30% of attribution blocked from fraudulent behavior
• Reinvested budgets saved from fraudulent behavior into marketing campaigns
• More accurate optimization according to quality of traffic
• Accurate data allowed them to make more confident decisions

Now, when the marketers at monobank look at their data they are confident that the numbers they see are coming from real users.

With such success, monobank will be integrating the Adjust SDK for attribution and Fraud Protection into its newest app in Great Britain, koto.